31 May, 2017

Another
proof that the former Rothschild banker and current French PM,
Emmanuel Macron, is definitely the man of the neoliberal
establishment to 'keep things in order', comes from the archive of
the Podesta emails through WikiLeaks.

Through a
letter on Aug. 27, 2015, Matthew Browne asked John Podesta if he, or
someone from Hillary Clinton camp, could attend a meeting hosted by
Emmanuel Macron (then French Finance Minister), to "develop a
successful political and economic narrative to counter the right and
populists to the left".

It's
impressive that Browne describes a meeting of two sessions, and one
of them was entirely dedicated for the purpose above. It appears the
elites are terrorized of what they call 'populism'.

This
'mini-Bilderberg' meeting included some important people from the
European establishment, who, according to Browne, "They've
asked for help bring some US people over, and are keen to get someone
from HRC campaign engaged in possible."

Key
parts:

Want to let
you know PM Valls is hosting a small roundtable (25-30 people) in
Paris on October 16/17. It will begin with a dinner on Friday evening
hosted by Emmanuel Macron (French Finance Minister) and the
following day there will be two roundtable sessions:

Session one
will address the challenges of economic globalization and
technological development, and be focused on how progressive respond
on policy front. Session two will evaluate how progressives
develop a successful political and economic narrative to counter the
right and populists to the left.

The
confirmed participants list is pretty impressive.

In addition
to Valls includes: Magdalena Andersson, Swedish Finance Minister,
Christine Antorini, MP and former Danish Minister of Education (in
the Cabinet of Helle Thorning-Schmidt), Lodewijk Asscher, deputy
prime minister, The Netherlands, Bjarne Corydon, MP and former
finance minister of Denmark (in the Cabinet of Helle
Thorning-Schmidt), Carlotta De Franceschi, economic adviser to
Italian Prime Minister Matteo Renzi, Jeroen Dijsselbloem, Dutch
finance minister and president of the eurozone finance ministers’
group, Paolo Gentiloni, minister of foreign affairs, Italy, Sandro
Gozi, secretary of state, European Affairs, Italy, Mattias Machnig,
secretary of state, economy and energy, Germany, Emmanuel
Macron, minister of economy, industrial renewal and
information technology, France, Peter Mandelson, president of Policy
Network, Jean Pisani-Ferry, French government's commissioner-general
for policy planning, David Sainsbury, former UK minister for science
and innovation and member of the House of Lords, Diederik Samsom,
leader of the Dutch Labour Party, Chuka Umunna, UK Shadow Business
Secretary, Jeromin Zettelmeyer is Director-General for Economic
Policy at the German Ministry of the Economy.

They've
asked for help bring some US people over, andare keen to get
someone from HRC campaign engaged in possible. Is this something
you might consider nominating a strategist or econ policy person to
attend, or even attending yourself? Either Policy Network or Jean
Jaures could cover travel and accommodation costs. I suspect it will
be a long shot, but Thanks for your advice.

It's also
impressive the fact that these banking-corporate puppets, who are
responsible for the brutal neoliberal policies imposed by their
masters (who are destroying entire countries through all kinds of
wars), label themselves 'progressives' against 'populists'.

It happens
all the time. Establishment servants have their frequent meetings to
find ways for keeping people obedient to their masters.

Jeremy
Corbyn does face bias from the British media, one of the BBC’s most
senior presenters has claimed. David Dimbleby said the Labour leader
does not get a “fair deal” from newspapers as he repeated a view
put forward by many of Corbyn’s supporters.

As a
lifelong BBC journalist, preparing to host his tenth general
election, the political views of Dimbley are unknown but he
criticised the coverage of Corbyn who, he said, has a “lot of
support in the country”.

“It’s
a very odd election,” the 78-year-old told the Radio Times. “If
the Conservative story is how Theresa May is the ‘brand leader’,
the interesting thing is that a lot of Labour supporters really like
and believe in the messages Jeremy Corbyn is bringing across. It’s
not his MPs in the House of Commons necessarily but there is a lot of
support in the country”.

Corbyn was
widely seen to have performed well in the Sky News/Channel 4 election
special last night when he dealt calmly with questions on issues from
Trident and nationalisation of industry to his own past contact with
the IRA.

Today a
Survation poll showed Labour had closed the gap on the Tories to six
per cent although Corbyn subsequently failed to answer key questions
on his childcare pledge when he appeared on the BBC programme Woman’s
Hour.

“I
don’t think anyone could say Corbyn has had a fair deal at the
hands of the press, in a way that the Labour Party did when it was
more to the centre, but then we generally have a right-wing press,”
Dimbleby added.

Some
supporters of Corbyn have repeatedly accused the BBC of bias and
booed and hissed political editor Laura Kuenssberg at Labour events.
Tom Watson criticised the activists for such behaviour last year and
two weeks ago the party leader quietened them when they booed Andy
Bell, the political editor of Channel Five – although some members
thought Corbyn should have spoken out sooner.

The Pentagon
said last week that there were "no credible indications of
civilian casualties" from the latest U.S. Navy SEALs raid on
a village in Yemen. Yet new reporting by The Intercept, citing
eyewitness accounts, offers more evidence to contradict the
military's claim.

Residents of
the village in Mareb province said that there were in fact 10
civilians killed and wounded, including a 15-year old child who was
trying to flee a barrage of firing from Apache helicopters. His name
was Abdullah Saeed Salem al Adhal. His 22-year-old brother, Murad al
Adhal, said to the news outlet that he saw "the nearby hills
were filled with the American soldiers."

"My
little brother Abdullah ran for his life with the other women and
children. They killed him as he was running," said Murad,
who was also shot in the leg.

Apart from
countering U.S. claims about the event, journalist Iona Craig writes,
the eyewitness testimony also raises serious questions about
intelligence gathering methods and the ability of decision-makers to
determine who is and who is not an Al Qaeda militant amidst Yemen's
multifaceted conflict where loyalties are fluid and pragmatically
based.

Human rights
organization Reprieve has also countered the military's version of
events, and identified 70-year-old, partially blind Nasser al-Adhal
as among the civilians killed in the May 23 raid. He was shot by U.S.
forces as he went to greet the SEALs, believing them to be guests.

"This
new flawed raid by President Trump shows the U.S. is not capable of
distinguishing a terrorist from an innocent civilian," said
Kate Higham, head of the assassinations program at Reprieve, in the
wake of the raid. "President Trump must order an immediate
investigation into what went wrong and halt all raids and drone
strikes before more innocent Yeminis are killed," she added.

Apart from
reeling from two years of war, millions of Yemenis are facing acute
hunger and a cholera outbreak. The World Health Organization said
Monday that the death toll from that epidemic has claimed 471 lives.

Meanwhile, a
handful of U.S. lawmakers is trying to block the sale of $110
billion arms deal with Saudi Arabia, which is leading the coalition
fight in Yemen and has been accused of committing war crimes in that
conflict.

And in Iraq,
another front in the ever-expanding global war on terror, Secretary
of Defense James "Mad Dog" Mattis said Sunday the U.S.
military will begin to use "annihilation tactics" to defeat
Islamic State (ISIS) fighters, adding to CBS's "Face the Nation"
that "[c]ivilian casualties are a fact of life in this sort of
situation."

May 25,
2017, by The Ministry of Foreign Affairs of the Russian Federation:

On May
23, the UNSC held its successive discussion on the state of affairs
around the so-called Syrian “chemical dossier”. The Western
“troika” of permanent members of the UN Security Council sought
to give an anti-Assad and anti-Russian pronounced spin to this event.
It was reconfirmed that these “exposers” of Damascus were not
interested in establishing the truth in a crucial issue of who
actually stood behind the alleged use of sarin on April 4, 2017, in
the Syrian province of Idlib. Representatives of the United States,
Great Britain and France have desperately resisted any attempt to
figure out to what extent their verdict delivered “in absentia”
about the allegedly undeniable responsibility of the Bashar Al-Assad
Government for this chemical attack in Khan Sheikhoun was justified.

An
unsightly scene has been developed. It seems that almost two months
after the chemical incident nobody has been in a hurry to visit Khan
Sheikhoun in order to examine all the circumstances of such a
high-impact case. Moreover, the Westerners have ruled out even the
very option of visiting the Shayirat airbase where, according to
their own allegations, the sarin used in Khan Sheikhoun was stored.

Unfortunately,
no activity has been undertaken in this regard by the OPCW
Fact-Finding Mission (FFM) that proceeds with postponing its visit to
Khan Sheikhoun blaming unfavorable security conditions. As for the
leadership of the OPCW – UN Joint Investigative Mechanism (JIM), it
is yet to develop a plan of investigatory actions indicating sites to
visit, individuals to question and documents to claim.

Russia’s
position on this ongoing situation is well known and crystal clear:
the investigation of this incident should be carried out as
scrupulously as possible, in strict compliance with the JIM and FFM
mandates approved by the UNSC and OPCW and include all investigatory
actions, methods and proceedings envisaged in relevant UNSC
resolutions and the Chemical Weapons Convention (CWC). Both Khan
Sheikhoun and Shayirat airbase must be visited, the first as the site
of this barbaric deed and the second as facility claimed to be
allegedly in a direct relation with it. The established vicious
practice within the JIM and FFM of conducting investigations in a
remote mode based on the evidence provided by questionable witnesses
or sometimes even “false victims” is absolutely unacceptable. The
resources of NGOs that compromised themselves long ago and have
established links with militants and terrorist entities are widely
used. This is not just an imitation of work – we are dealing with a
deliberate, intentional falsification in pursuance of clearly
established political objectives.

The
problem as ever isn't the standards the left has to meet - it's how
low the bar is for the right.

Jeremy
Corbyn has had a tricky encounter with Emma Barnett on Women’s
Hour, in which the Labour leader was unable to remember the cost of
his flagship childcare policy – for 30 hours of childcare to be
made available for free regardless of parental income, benefiting 1.3
million families.

The
interview is great radio – you can read the transcript here but
it’s better heard than read – but is it a good way to cover
politics? My colleague Helen doesn’t think so, and nor does Matt
Zarb-Cousin, formerly of the leader’s office, now turned pro-Corbyn
commentator. They think that by asking these questions, they are
turning elections into a test of memory, not an arena where the
strength of the parties’ programmes are judged. Are they right?

Well, sort
of. As Zarb-Cousin points out, we already know that every spending
commitment in Labour’s manifesto has been costed, so the question
of how much each commitment costs in of itself doesn’t tell us
anything. A more revealing policy question is whether or not the
£2.7bn would be better spent on children aged two to four in a
different way.

(The answer
there is: Sort of yes, sort of no. The really transformative stuff
around early years education in Britain is happening in schools
providing teacher-led care from two to 11, but that would cost a lot
more than the £2.7bn childcare commitment would. It’s a bit like
saying “Wouldn’t a new space station be better for interstellar
research than a new university building?” – the answer is yes,
but it’s beside the point.)

And Helen is
right to say that ultimately, the ability to remember a figure is not
a particularly relevant one as far as judging the next Prime Minister
is concerned.

There’s
the added problem of course that this style of questioning benefits
the right, as any gaffe made by a leftwing politician is amplified
and more widely-shared by Britain’s large right-wing press, which
in turn shapes broadcast coverage. The leftwing press is far smaller,
so gaffes by right-wing politicians often reach a smaller audience. A
good example in this election is in the fate of the two parties’
home affairs leads: Amber Rudd’s call for experts versed in the
“necessary hashtags” to stop offensive messages being posted on
social media has had a far more limited afterlife than Diane Abbott
forgetting how much Labour would have to spend to reverse the
government’s cuts to policing. Abbott got her sums wrong, Rudd
appeared not to have got her arms around a central issue relating to
her department, and yet Abbott’s gaffe has become a dominant part
of the election campaign.

There are
two “buts”, however. The first, is that while the question might
not be revealing about policy, these “gotcha” questions do
stress-test the competence of the team behind the leader. Given that
Jeremy Corbyn was on Woman’s Hour to talk about the party’s
childcare policy, he should have been armed with a small piece of
paper and to have rehearsed the cost of the policy, how it would be
paid for, and so forth, as it was all-but-inevitable he would be
asked. (Particularly as Labour are rightly making a big play of the
fact that the figures in the Conservative manifesto can be boiled
down to “Trust me, okay?”)

This isn’t
the first time that Labour’s difficulty giving its frontline
politicians the information they need has been a problem this
campaign. As I explained at the time, John McDonnell’s fiscal rule
set out clearly why they didn’t need to provide additional costing
for their planned programme of re-nationalisations. But that so many
shadow ministers, including loyal Corbynites, were unable to explain
that in interviews revealed a worrying failure on the part of the
leadership to get its ducks in a row.

And while
policies should be a big part of elections, they shouldn’t be the
only part: the characters of the leaders should too. Take the Brexit
talks. Both Labour and the Conservatives have effectively the same
policy on paper: to retain the benefits of European Union membership
as far as possible while no longer being subject to the free movement
of people. But of course, their ability to get the best possible deal
– and their willingness to harm the economy to get control over
immigration – ultimately rests on a question of what we reckon as
to their characters and disposition.

Or last
night’s not-quite-debates. Does it matter that Jeremy Corbyn worked
on his tendency to be overcome by a red mist in heated interviews and
was a model of calm, while Theresa May’s habit of shooting
murderous stares at anyone remained unchecked? Well, as far as the
telly goes, that Corbyn didn’t produce pictures of him gritting his
teeth while May stared angrily at cameras obviously contributed to
the Labour leader’s win last night. But they also speak to what you
hear from staff in the leader’s office and civil servants on
Whitehall. Corbyn’s aides will talk about how they feel able to
speak truth to power without being shouted down – they don’t
necessarily get their way but they don’t fear the consequences of
dissent. Government officials however, do fear that they will be
given a barracking if they go against May. That speaks to far bigger
concerns than who looked better on telly – not least the question
of who can negotiate Brexit or who should be in the room at moments
of crisis. Equally, how prepared a politician is for a gotcha
question does speak to how well-run their office is and is a
commentary on how well-run their government would be.

There’s a
second but. As my colleague Anoosh notes, the big problem isn’t
that the media gives Jeremy Corbyn a tough ride – it’s that the
media it gives the right an incredibly easy one. It’s not
unreasonable that for Labour to win it needs not only to cost its
policy but to brief its candidates well enough that they can explain
that policy to voters and its leader in particular.

It is
unreasonable and worrying that if the polls are right, Britain is
about to re-elect a government planning a migration target that would
blow a hole in the public finances with a Home Secretary who thinks
that social media companies are capable of “breaking into” an
encrypted message. And no-one has really asked them about it.

30 May, 2017

A recent
survey
by YouGov shows that the British youth overwhelmingly chooses to vote
for the Labour party under Jeremy Corbyn against the Conservative
party under Theresa May.

Perhaps the
most interesting feature here is that the power of the Conservatives
grows linearly with the age of the voters, which shows the gap
between younger generations and the older ones. The younger would
like to see Corbyn's socialist policies implemented, to drive UK
forward against neoconservatism and neoliberalism. On the contrary,
the older remain conservative and unwilling to see real changes.

This is
clearly depicted:

Age

18-24

25-49

50-64

65+

Conservative

22

31

45

67

Labour

59

48

32

19

We see a
similar picture here with the primary elections of the Democrats in
the US, where the American youth supported massively Bernie Sanders
and managed to boost his power against Hillary Clinton. When the
establishment saw his power grow rapidly, the DNC itself decided to
get him out of the game.

Various
polls in the UK show a bigger gap between Conservatives and the
Labour, but all show that the gap is closing significantly as we
approach the election day. Will Jeremy Corbyn manage to make the
surprise, despite the war against him from the establishment and the
media?

Everything
shows that the British youth could bring a political earthquake in
the UK that could affect significantly the political developments in
Europe, despite Brexit.

29 May, 2017

Political
heat rose for one more time in Greece on the occasion of the recent
bomb-attackagainst the former Greek PM
Lucas Papademos.

The
political opposition, mainly through the neoliberal right party, New
Democracy, attacked the current government, and mainly SYRIZA, for
its stance to criticize Papademos administration as being a
non-elected government, imposed by Greece's creditors from November
2011 to May 2012.

Such
political attacks have become a routine case from the side of the old
political establishment (mainly the Right New Democracy and the
Social-Democrats PASOK), constantly accusing SYRIZA (Coalition of the
Radical Left) that encourages terrorism.

This time,
however, the neoliberal establishment in Greece went one step
further. In one of the biggest TV channels which belongs to a top
Greek oligarch, some neoliberal pundits called
for censorship against Facebook and Twitter users
who expressed negative views against Papademos. Moreover, one of
them, called for prosecution against nearly 10,000 users! The social
media and various independent blogs fired back, pointing that these
pundits have come to the point of requesting Erdogan-type practices!

This is a
picture of a regime that becomes increasingly authoritarian. We can
imagine a 1984-type future where censorship could come at any time,
against anyone who dares to criticize even an unelected banking
puppet, like Papademos. With the pretext of terrorism, repression
measures and militarization of urban centers becomes something common
and people are getting used to it. In the authoritarianism of the
future, people could become suspects of terrorism just for
criticizing someone, even if that happens before any attempt against
him.

The
neoliberal regime in the West and elsewhere becomes increasingly
authoritarian, exactly because the old political establishment which
represents it, starts to collapse almost everywhere. Because its
brainwashing mechanisms start to collapse too. Authoritarianism is
the last resort of the elites when the old tricks don't work anymore.
It happens right now in Brazil,
for example.

Recall
that, the former president of the European
Commission, José Manuel Barroso, came up with the idea, back in
2011, that the then Greek PM George Papandreou could be replaced by
the technocrat Lucas Papademos, as eventually happened, when
Papandreou "dared" to think to hold a referendum on the
acceptance of the terms of the eurozone bailout deal with Greece, and
that, Papademos worked with Goldman
Sachs when Greece was trying to get its debts levels down so it could
swap its currency from the drachma to the euro. It later transpired
that that cross currency deals negotiated between Greece and Goldman
had helped mask Greece’s true levels of debt and contributed to the
current crisis in the eurozone.

UK Labour
leader Jeremy Corbyn has had the audacity to utter the unthinkable.
In his first campaign speech since the terrorist attack on Manchester
Arena, he dared to link Britain’s involvement in foreign wars to
terrorism on British soil.

During the
15-minute speech on how Labour would deliver on domestic security in
the UK, Corbyn said: “Many experts, including professionals in
our intelligence and security services have pointed to the
connections between wars our government has supported or fought in
other countries, such as Libya, and terrorism here at home.”

It’s no
surprise that Corbyn was immediately accused by his critics of
politicizing the Manchester attack by drawing a link between
terrorism and foreign policy. But the response from Prime Minister
Theresa May was perhaps the most sickening and disingenuous of all.

Speaking on
the sidelines of the G7 in Taormina, May unashamedly twisted Corbyn’s
words and lied blatantly: “Jeremy Corbyn has said that terror
attacks in Britain are our own fault,” she said, before going a
step further to imply Corbyn had made excuses for the Manchester
attacker: “There can never, ever be an excuse for terrorism.
There can be no excuse for what happened in Manchester.”

Let’s just
get this clear: Jeremy Corbyn did not say terrorist attacks on
British soil are the fault of British people — and he did not make
any excuses, nor did he imply any excuses could ever be made, for
terrorists who carry out such attacks.

For anyone
who actually listened to his speech, there can be no debating this.
Corbyn never said any such thing. May simply decided to take his
actual words and fashion them into something which she thought might
win her a few extra votes in the upcoming general election. Ten days
out, with her lead in the polls dramatically sinking, any dig against
Corbyn will do — even if she needs to stoop to calling him a
terrorist sympathizer.

How
destructive can man get, how ruthless, in his quest to secure maximum
profit, even as he endangers the very survival of our planet?

The tropical
forests of Kalimantan (known as Borneo in Malaysia), the third
largest island in the world, have almost totally disappeared.
Coalmines are savagely scarring the hills; the rivers are polluted,
and countless species are endangered or extinct.

It is all a
terrible sight, whether you see it from the air or when driving (or
walking) through the devastation that is taking place on the ground.
The soil is black; it is often saturated with chemicals. Dead stubs
of trees are accusatively pointing towards the sky. Many wonderful
creatures, big and small, who used to proudly inhabit this tropical
paradise, are now hiding in the depth of what remains of one of the
largest tropical jungles on earth

Engines are
instantly roaring everywhere; huge equipment is continually cutting
through something pure, or digging and finally transporting what has
already been extracted, killed, or taken down mercilessly.

“I
think we, the people of Borneo, have lost our sovereignty over our
own space and resources, under the pressure of global capitalism...
Apparently, we just became poor despite all the wealth that we have.”

Eight bodies
of civilians who appeared to be executed were uncovered in a ravine
near the besieged city of Marawi, Philippines on Sunday, Reuters
reports citing police.

Most of the
civilians, believed to be local carpenters, were shot in the head,
and some had their hands tied behind their backs. One body had a
plaque reading “munafik” (hypocrite) attached.

The bodies
of eight other civilians, including three women and one child, were
uncovered by the military in a road close to a local university,
according to AP, citing army spokesman Brig. Gen. Restituto Padilla.

The total
death toll in the city overrun by Islamist militants linked to
Islamic State (IS, formerly ISIS/ISIL) is currently 95, with 61
militants, 19 civilians, 11 soldiers, and four policemen killed in
the clashes, the spokesman said. The standoff between IS-linked
militants and government military forces in Marawi has entered the
sixth day.

Brazil's
government revoked Thursday a presidential decree deploying the
military in Brasilia to quell mass protests against unelected
President Michel Temer, high-level corruption and unpopular
neoliberal austerity measures.

The
government deployed soldiers Wednesday to crack down on the popular
uprising, claiming that riot police forces were unable to handle the
tens of thousands of demonstrators that flooded the streets of the
capital city to demand Temer's resignation and early elections to
choose a new president before the scheduled 2018 ballot. Organizers
estimated the protests boasted a turnout of 150,000 demonstrators
under the banner "Occupy Brasilia," a massive crowd in the
city of about 3 million.

The decision
to call in the military was strongly criticized by Temer's opponents,
as well as some of his allies, with opposition lawmakers walking out
of Congress Wednesday in protest of the move.

Approximately
50 people were injured amid clashes that erupted during the protests
as police and military employed pepper spray, tear gas, rubber
bullets and batons against the demonstrators. The decree also gave
soldiers policing rights and the power to make arrests.

According to
Brazil's Folha de Sao Paulo newspaper, advisors had warned Temer
before his announcement of the decree that the move could have a
negative impact on his reputation, already tarnished by widespread
government corruption and his forceful implementation of an austerity
agenda.

The latest
protests against the Temer administration, installed last year with
the removal of former President Dilma Rousseff in an impeachment
process widely condemned as a parliamentary coup, come on the heels
of the most severe scandal to hit the government yet after a wiretap
recording revealed Temer had endorsed bribes to keep quiet a powerful
witness in corruption investigations.

Temer faces
investigations for corruption and obstruction of justice after the
damning wiretap.

The
president has vowed that he will not step down over the scandal,
saying in an interview with Folha de Sao Paulo, "I won't
resign, oust me if you want."

The deeply
unpopular Temer administration has also sparked widespread outrage
with a series of controversial neoliberal policies — including a
reform that freezes public spending for two decades — that are
expected to hit poor and marginalized Brazilians hardest by rolling
back a number of social programs, including education, health,
pensions and labor laws.

The US Army
failed to keep tabs on more than $1 billion worth of arms and other
military equipment in Iraq and Kuwait according to a now declassified
Department of Defense (DoD) audit, obtained by Amnesty International
following Freedom of Information requests.

The
government audit, from September 2016, reveals that the DoD “did
not have accurate, up-to-date records on the quantity and location”
of a vast amount of equipment pouring into Kuwait and Iraq to
provision the Iraqi Army.

“This
audit provides a worrying insight into the US Army’s flawed – and
potentially dangerous - system for controlling millions of dollars’
worth of arms transfers to a hugely volatile region,” said
Patrick Wilcken, Amnesty International’s Arms Control and Human
Rights Researcher.

26 May, 2017

Cuba’s
Henry Reeve International Contingent of Doctors Specializing in
Disasters and Serious Epidemics is being recognized once again: the
medical team is set to receive this week the Dr. Lee Jong-wook
Memorial Prize for Public Health from the World Health Organization.

The
internationalist brigade is being recognized for its solidarity work
throughout the world, as well its outstanding contribution to public
health.

In
particular, WHO is commending the team’s work in combatting the
Ebola virus in Sierra Leone, Liberia and Guinea, where Cuba had sent
more than 250 workers when the crisis peaked in 2015. For their work
there, they were also nominated for the Nobel Peace Prize in 2015.

Currently,
the brigade is in Peru, helping the thousands affected by deadly
rains and flooding for the better part of this year.

The Cuban
Minister of Public Health Roberto Morales Ojeda will head the Cuban
delegation to the 70th World Health Assembly, where the brigade will
receive its award Friday.

Morales
Ojeda will also participate in meetings with health ministers of the
member countries of the Non-Aligned Movement, according to a
statement from Cuba’s Permanent Mission to Geneva.

The Henry
Reeve Brigade was first created by the late revolutionary leader
Fidel Castro on Sept. 19, 2005. Its first missions were in Guatemala
and Pakistan, countries that faced the consequences of a hurricane
and a devastating earthquake, respectively.